A Decolonial Perspective on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's Invasion of Libya in 2011

Abstract

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (hereafter, NATO) invasion of Libya in 2011 demonstrated and revealed the operative logics and technologies of global coloniality. Global coloniality names the trans-historic expansion of colonial domination and the perpetuation of its effects in contemporary times. This thesis critically examines how coloniality of power was manifested in the invasion of Libya by NATO forces in 2011. Deploying a decolonial epistemic perspective, the thesis delves deeper into the invisible colonial matrices of power, and in the process exposing and unmasking the very conditions that made the invasion possible in the first place. The decolonial epistemic perspective combines historical and world systems analyses to shed light on the convergences of local histories and global designs in creating conflicts. At the centre of the concept of coloniality of power is control, expressed in four main levers of analysis, namely: control of authority, control of the economy, control of knowledge and subjectivity and control of gender and sexuality. At the centre of global colonial matrices of power, is the United Nations (UN), which is controlled by the few powerful states of the Global North with veto power. The UN is used to justify liberal imperial invasions. Libya just like Iraq before it, and Venezuela today, are victims of neo-liberal imperialist onslaught. What emerges in this thesis is how global coloniality has appropriated liberal discourses of liberal democracy and human rights to justify liberal imperialism. The main findings are that a Euro-North American-centric power configuration was challenged by Qaddafi’s introduction of the gold-backed dinar currency, the pursuit of acquiring a telecommunications satellite for information and knowledge-creation for Africa, Qaddafi’s rising popularity in Africa and the Global South, and Qaddafi’s conception and position on women-empowerment, thereby redefining the conception of gender and sexuality, which was antithetical to a Euro-North America-centric worldview. As a result, the delinquent Qaddafi had to be punished and eliminated.